Shelf Life in the Laundry Room

Except, every time that I throw a load in the washer or dryer, I’m looking at those shelves. And spied an opportunity to make just a couple little tweaks to make them even better.

One thing already changed by the time this picture was taken.

My old sewing basket – nearly 30 years old, by my reckoning – was a bit too wide for the shelf it sat on. Not a big deal, except I spied some newer models that would fit. Once I removed spools of thread and placed them on the thread organizer, I felt very confident that I could slightly downsize without feeling short-changed on space. So…

Fits like it was made for the space. And with a 50% off coupon, definitely fit my budget.

The other little tweak I wanted to make was in a little bin I picked up on clearance at my local Target months ago. It has a chalkboard insert, but the rest was just white. It kind of washed out (no pun intended), and I thought just a little bit of color might cheer it up.

It doesn’t really hold much of anything, but lots of potential.

Sure it meant a little awkwardness for the dryer sheets and spray starch while the project went on, but I assured them it would be well worth the effort. (You talk to inanimate objects like they’re real too, right?)

I think the spray starch was trying to hit up the Woolite. Oxi Clean was pretending it didn’t know any of them.

I grabbed my supplies and set up a painting station on the recently-painted table.

The hardest part was probably peeling off the clearance sticker. I was a little bit sad to remove it, but the memory of the clearance price will remain. Then I took a moment to tape off the edges where the bin met the blackboard, and we were ready to paint.

I ultimately applied three coats of color. Though the first coat looked kind of neat.

I couldn’t quickly locate the carpenter’s corners my husband keeps in his shop, so I improvised with a quartet of q-tips to keep the base of the little bin off the ground. It actually worked out pretty slick. I also splurged on some chalk markers to write the occasional pithy message on that little blackboard. Just to give me another reason to smile when I’m taking care of the dirty laundry.

Not too much color, but a little rosy cheer for the shelf.

And, I think that’s it. For now, at least. But what a difference it’s made. This may have sounded like quite a lot of little things going into this space; curious to know what it all cost? Maybe I’ll get out the calculator and figure that out.